Thus far, just about everything has gone as planned in Philadelphia following the offseason overhaul the team underwent. Point guard Jrue Holiday, free from the shadow of All-Star Andre Iguodala and without sixth man Lou Williams infringing on his minutes and scoring chances, has flourished, averaging 19.0 points and 9.0 assists. Third-year wing Evan Turner is beginning to let go of the pressure that came with being the No. 2 overall pick, and though he has struggled with his shooting (37.8 percent), he is averaging 11.7 points and 8.7 rebounds. The team added depth next to Turner, so that even with Jason Richardson injured, coach Doug Collins still has Dorrell Wright and Nick Young on hand.

It’s clear why, entering the season, the Philadelphia 76ers looked like a darkhorse threat in the East. Except ... well, except for one big thing: Andrew Bynum’s balky right knee.

It’s no surprise that the Sixers are in this spot, of course, waiting on Bynum and his knee. He was diagnosed with a bone bruise on his knee in September, and his return date has been pushed back, now all the way to January. Bynum has a history of problems in both knees, dating back to high school, and has missed at least 17 games in five of his first NBA seasons. He was healthy last season, missing just six games, and put up 18.7 points and 11.8 rebounds, moving from the ranks of potentially dominating young players into an actually dominating one. It was for that reason that the Sixers took a chance on Bynum this summer, even though he is in the last year of his contract and the team has no assurances he will stay.

But it’s not hard to imagine what the Sixers could be with Bynum, who chafed while playing for the Lakers and would have been the interior centerpiece who could make Holiday and Turner even better. “If he’s mature, if he can come and shape and just play his game and also try to make the other guys around him better, because be careful what you ask for sometimes,” Lakers great and ESPN analyst Magic Johnson said. “OK, you wanted more shots, you wanted your own team, well, you have it now. So are you mature enough to handle that you have to perform night in and night out? We’ll have to see if Andrew can do that. I think he can. He's showed us signs that he can. ... But the last piece of that, stay healthy.”

That’s been the tricky part, and the Sixers are doing all they can to accommodate Bynum’s ever-lengthening timetable for return. They don’t have much choice. At most, Bynum will play about 50 games for Philadelphia this year. It makes the Sixers a difficult sell for an anxious fan base, and closes the window of time that the team has to assess Bynum as a player on the floor and in the locker room. The Sixers are a potentially dangerous team, but they don’t know how dangerous and they don’t know how much they should pay to keep Bynum as part of the future.

In the meantime, the players are trying to keep Bynum off their Minds -- his absence is too easy an excuse. “We have done that from the beginning,” Holiday said. “We have done it since training camp. We have kind of tried to go about it like, we are just playing and when he comes back, great, everything will be that much better. When we play and practice or when we do things, go over the scouting report and look at other teams, we have to do it like Andrew is not here. When that changes, we will deal with that then. Obviously we think we can be a really good team.”

That was the idea when they traded away Iguodala this summer, that was the idea when they cut Elton Brand through the amnesty provision, that was the idea when they let Williams go in free agency—rather than continue to be a low-rung playoff team, the Sixers turned themselves into a hit-or-miss contender. If Bynum can come back and be the player they thought they were getting, even after the long delay, the Sixers will be a factor in the East. If not, if Bynum is not 100 percent or if he simply doesn’t play enough to give the team a sense of how he fits in going forward, the Sixers will be in for a very difficult decision about the future of the franchise next summer.